Prime Video’s new sci-fi series the peripherals is based on the novel by William Gibson.
A young woman struggling to keep it together in a small town in America witnesses what may or may not be a murder in the first teaser for the peripheralsa new Prime Video series based on William Gibson’s 2014 novel of the same name.
(Spoilers for the novel below.)
The novel is vintage Gibson in many ways: a bleak, dystopian future world brimming with big thematic ideas, visionary technology, and its own slang terminology. The reader is immersed in this setting and must acclimate accordingly; Gibson is not interested in presenting us everything on a silver platter. But that initial effort pays off as the novel evolves into an action-packed cyberpunk thriller.
There are two storylines that eventually begin to converge. The first arc is set in our near future and revolves around a young woman named Flynne. Flynne works at the local 3D print shop in a small town; the store is the sole source of goods for the population, along with Walmart’s fictional future descendants, Hefty Mart. Flynne’s brother Burton is a veteran of the elite Haptic Recon Force of the US Marine Corps and suffers brain trauma as a result of his cybernetic implants.
Prime Video
Burton works on security for a video game/virtual world maintained by a company called Milagros Coldiron. When Flynne agrees to replace Burton one day, she witnesses a woman gruesomely murdered by a swarm of nanobots. But is it a real murder, or is it just part of the game? (This is a Gibson novel, so the boundaries can get a little blurry.)
The second arc is set in a futuristic and desolate London in the wake of an apocalyptic event called “the Jackpot”, which wiped out 80 percent of the population. This world is essentially ruled by Russian oligarchs (“clappers”). Here our protagonist is a corporate PR guy named Wilf Netherton, who pulls off a publicity stunt for Daedra West, the world version of an influencer. The stunt goes terribly wrong and Wilf is fired.
The link between the two timelines is the titular black market technology, “peripherals,” favored by hobbyists known as “continua enthusiasts.” The peripherals run on ‘quantum servers’ and digitally connect the users to the past, and the moment they make direct contact, the past splits into an alternate timeline called a ‘stub’. Wilf is introduced to the technique and existence of stubs through his wealthy friend Lev. Eventually we find out that Flynne’s world is such a stub. The increasingly complex and interconnected plot includes a hunt for Daedra’s missing sister Aelita, corporate espionage, political corruption, timeline shenanigans and multiple attempts on Flynne’s life as she is the sole witness to Aelita’s murder.
Prime Video
Prime Video gave the green light for the TV adaptation in November 2019 and the show is developed by west world showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy as part of their overall deal with the streaming platform. They serve as executive producers, along with series creator and showrunner Scott B. Smith. By deadline Hollywood, the peripherals is intended as a “blinding, hallucinatory glimpse into the fate of humanity – and what lies beyond.”
Chloë Grace Moretz stars as Flynne Fisher, with Jack Reynor (Midsommar) alongside her brother Burton and Eli Goree playing Burton’s triple amputee comrade Conner. Gary Carr plays Wilf and Charlotte Riley plays Aelita. (Oddly enough, there is no cast list for Daedra, who plays a pivotal role in the novel.) The cast also includes JJ Feild as Lev, Adeline Horan as Billy Ann Baker, T’Nia Miller as Cherise, Alex Hernandez as Tommy Constantine, Austin Rising as Leon, Louis Herthum as local drug lord Corbell Pickett, Chris Coy as Jasper, Melinda Page Hamilton as Ella, Katie Leung as Ash, Hannah Arterton as Dee Dee and Alexandra Billings as Detective Ainsley Lowbeer.
Will the series be good? It’s hard to tell from this lengthy teaser, which focuses on introducing the premise and is set to weird retro electronic music reminiscent of Weird stuff or TRON. But the visuals are certainly striking and we will clearly get a lot of action. We get glimpses of the novel’s movable tattoos, a possible swarm of nanobots, and what appears to be a car cloaking technology similar to the invisibility “squid suits” favored by killers in the novel’s future world.
the peripherals will premiere on Prime Video on October 21, 2022. A second season is reportedly already in active development. The eight-hour episodes from the first season should cover the entire 2014 novel, raising the question of where the series will go for the second season. One possibility: Gibson published a “sequel and a prequel” novel in 2020 Desk. That book features the same futuristic technology and is set in an alternate 2017 (where Hillary Clinton was elected US president) and — what else? – a “post-apocalyptic” period in the 22nd century with people engaged in more timeline shenanigans.
List image by Prime Video
